WooCommerce vs Shopify (South African view)

Shopify and WooCommerce can both run a South African online shop well. Shopify is a hosted subscription platform: the hosting, security and checkout are run for you. WooCommerce is a free, open source plugin that adds a shop to a WordPress site you host yourself. Shopify is simpler to run. WooCommerce gives more control and suits shops that are part of a larger website.

What each one is

Shopify

Shopify is a complete hosted ecommerce platform. You pay a subscription and get hosting, a checkout, themes, an app store and platform maintenance. You do not manage a server or run software updates. Extra features come from apps, many of which carry their own subscriptions.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an open source ecommerce plugin for WordPress. It is free to download, and it runs on any hosting you choose. You control the checkout, the data and the code. Extra features come from extensions and other WordPress plugins. You are also responsible for hosting, updates, backups and security, or for paying someone to handle them.

Payments in South Africa

Both platforms have their own payment service, and neither is available to South African businesses. Shopify Payments does not list South Africa among its supported countries, and WooPayments does not list it either. On both platforms a South African shop uses a third-party payment gateway.

The main local gateways support both:

• Payfast has an official WooCommerce extension, developed by the WooCommerce team, and lists a Shopify integration. The WooCommerce extension supports subscriptions.
• Yoco lists both Shopify and WooCommerce among its supported platforms.
• Peach Payments lists integrations for both Shopify and WooCommerce.

So gateway availability is not a reason to choose one platform over the other. Two differences are worth knowing.

First, Shopify's documentation says that third-party transaction fees apply to payments processed through third-party gateways. This is a Shopify charge on top of what the gateway itself charges. WooCommerce does not charge a platform fee on sales, so you pay only the gateway. The rates change, so check Shopify's current pricing and your gateway's rates and work it out on your own expected turnover.

Second, WooCommerce gives more freedom over how the gateway is set up and how the checkout behaves, because the code is open. Shopify's checkout is more fixed, which is also why it tends to be reliable.

For more on choosing a gateway, see the guide to payment gateways in South Africa.

Couriers and shipping

Local courier integration is available on both platforms.

• Bob Go, from Bob Group in Johannesburg, has a Shopify app and a WooCommerce plugin. Both listings name South African couriers including The Courier Guy, Pargo, RAM and SkyNet, and both can show courier rates at checkout and generate shipping labels.
• The Courier Guy publishes its own WooCommerce plugin, which calculates quotes at checkout and prints waybills.

Check that the courier you already use is covered, and test the rates shown at checkout with your real product sizes and weights before launch.

How they compare beyond payments

Running the shop day to day

Shopify's admin is built only for selling, and most owners find it quick to learn. WooCommerce sits inside WordPress, so the shop shares an admin with the rest of the site. That is convenient if you already use WordPress and one more thing to learn if you do not.

Maintenance

Shopify maintains the platform. On WooCommerce, updates to WordPress, WooCommerce and every extension need to be tested and applied, ideally on a staging copy first, because a failed update on a live shop costs sales.

Content and SEO

WooCommerce benefits from WordPress, which is a strong content system. Shops that depend on guides, articles and detailed category pages have more freedom there. Shopify has a blog and handles the basics well, with a more fixed URL structure.

Customisation

WooCommerce can be shaped to unusual needs: custom product builders, quote requests, bookings sold alongside products, or complex pricing rules. Shopify covers standard retail very well and handles unusual needs through apps or custom development within its limits.

Ownership

A WooCommerce shop can move to any host. A Shopify shop lives on Shopify. Products, customers and orders can be exported, but the theme and apps do not transfer to another platform.

Choose Shopify when

• Selling products is the whole purpose of the site.
• You want the least technical upkeep possible.
• Your catalogue and checkout needs are standard.
• You sell in person as well and want one system for both.

Choose WooCommerce when

• The shop is one part of a wider WordPress site with a lot of content.
• You need custom product logic, bookings or unusual checkout rules.
• You want to avoid a platform fee on each sale and are happy to manage hosting and maintenance.
• You want full ownership of the code and data.

Where Stryx stands

Stryx builds on both and chooses per project. It sometimes recommends Shopify for online shops, mainly when the business wants to sell standard products with little upkeep. It builds with WooCommerce when the shop needs to sit inside a WordPress site or needs custom behaviour. The decision follows the research stage, once the catalogue, payment needs and delivery set-up are known.

Related reading

• Ecommerce website design
• WooCommerce development
• WooCommerce maintenance
• Ecommerce SEO

To discuss which platform suits your shop, contact Stryx.